A bipartisan resolution that would block US President Donald Trump from launching further strikes on Iran failed to pass the Senate floor on Wednesday, as the Pentagon pledged to “accelerate” its actions in a war that’s “just getting started”.
In a 52-47 procedural vote on Wednesday, the Republican-controlled Senate blocked a war powers resolution aimed at curbing Trump’s ability to escalate military action against Iran, preventing the measure from reaching the floor for debate.
The resolution was introduced by more than 20 Democrats and Republican Senator Rand Paul on January 29, 2026. It asserted that Congress had the sole power to declare war under the US Constitution and demanded the removal of US armed forces from Iran that Congress had not authorised.
Democrat senator Tim Kaine, one of the lawmakers who introduced the resolution, wrote on Tuesday that Trump had unilaterally launched strikes at Iran without authorisation or articulating a clear strategy, dragging the US into “unnecessary forever wars”, and urged lawmakers to support the resolution to end the war.
“We must act to stop Trump’s belligerence. The American people will be watching how senators vote; history will judge this chamber for how we act,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday on the Senate floor.
Republican lawmakers have largely sided with Trump in US attacks on Iran. House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Tuesday that the president was “well within his constitutional authority to do what he has done”, and “the idea that a few colleagues here would try to move a war powers motion and resolution to the floor right now is dangerous”.
The House was preparing to vote on a war powers resolution on Thursday, with a result expected to be tight.
The War Powers Resolution became law in 1973 during the Richard Nixon presidency. It requires the US president, “in every possible instance”, to consult Congress before introducing armed forces into hostilities and to withdraw forces after 60 days, and allows lawmakers to call for a vote to block further military actions.
Even if a resolution was passed, however, the president can still veto it, and many US presidents in recent decades have launched military operations without authorisation from Congress. In a more recent example, in 2011, former US president Barack Obama’s administration ordered the US military to join a Nato military campaign in Libya without congressional approval.
In January, the Senate dropped a bipartisan resolution that sought to stop Trump from continuing military action in Venezuela, after two initially supportive Republican lawmakers voted against the resolution.
Hegseth claims US ‘just getting started’
The Pentagon declared on Wednesday, the fifth day of the war, that the US would take all the time it needs to make sure it succeeds and that the Iranian regime was “toast”.
“As President Trump said, more and larger waves are coming,” Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday morning. “We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating.”
Hegseth said the US Navy had on Tuesday sunk an Iranian warship with a torpedo, and that the US and Israel would gain complete control of Iranian skies in the coming days.
“Their leadership is just rapidly going. Everybody that seems to want to be a leader, they end up dead. And it’s an amazing, an amazing thing that’s taking place before your eyes,” Trump said on Wednesday at a gathering of tech executives at the White House.
“We’re doing well on the war front, to put it mildly. Somebody said, on a scale of 10, where would you rate it? I said about a 15.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also said that the administration’s Operation Epic Fury has so far been a “resounding success” and added that Trump is “actively considering” a US role in Iran after the American-Israeli operation against the country concludes.
“I think it’s something the president is actively considering and discussing with his advisers and his national security team,” Leavitt told Wednesday’s briefing.
Spain denies agreeing ‘to cooperate’ on US strikes
Leavitt also said that Spain, which Trump blasted on Tuesday for not allowing the US to use its military base for Iran strikes, had agreed to cooperate, a claim that the Spanish government immediately refuted.
“With respect to Spain, I think they heard the president’s message yesterday loud and clear,” Leavitt said, adding that it was her “understanding that over the past several hours they’ve agreed to cooperate with the US military”.
Not long after, Spanish Foreign Minister José Luis Albares told Cadena SER radio: “I categorically deny any change ... Our position on the use of the bases, on the war in the Middle East, on the bombardment of Iran, has not changed at all.”
Albares had previously said that his country wouldn’t allow the US to use its jointly operated military bases in southern Spain for any strikes not authorised by the UN charter. This prompted Trump to threaten to “cut off all trade with Spain”.
While all eyes are on the Iran war’s impact on China-US relations ahead of Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s highly anticipated meeting in Beijing at the end of this month, Hegseth on Wednesday refuted China and Russia’s roles in the joint US-Israeli attacks as Iran’s allies.
“I don’t have a message for them, and they aren’t a factor here,” Hegseth said. “Our issue is not with them, but with the nuclear ambitions of Iran.” -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
